Sunday, August 9, 2015

What is the Future of the United Church of Canada?

The United Church of
Canada is holding its General Council this week under the theme of "behold I make all things new." On the agenda
are many issues, but the most important is the future of the 90 year-old
denomination—what new things can it do to survive a decline in funding and membership? What does the future hold? That's the question I raised in my Aug. 8 Free Press column.

United Church of Canada
members from across Canada are gathered this week in Corner Brook, Newfoundland
for the forty-second General
Council—a week-long assembly that could potentially re-shape and re-imagine the
90 year-old denomination.

While there, they will
discuss and vote on almost 200 proposals. Many are procedural, but others deal
with substantial issues like missing and murdered indigenous women, nuclear
proliferation, the arms trade, the treatment of prison inmates, fossil fuel
divestment, climate change, proportional voting for Members of Parliament, and
the Trans Canada Pipeline.

Delegates—called
Commissioners—will also elect a new Moderator out of 12 nominees. This time,
none of the nominees are from Manitoba .

But the major issue on
everyone’s mind will be the future of the United Church .

The need for a new vision and structure for
the Church has been brewing for some time, fueled by declining membership (down
26 percent between 2002 and 2012), declining attendance at worship services (down 38
percent), and the closing of churches (565 churches closed or merged).

All this has resulted in a decline in
donations—in 2012 the church had an operating
deficit of $7.1 million for its general fund. At the Council, Commissioners
will be asked to vote on a proposal for the Church to “live within its means,”
which will mean cutting $11 million from its $30 million budget.

Before the Council began, I asked two
local United Church members what they hoped might happen in the coming week at
the Council.

James Christie, who attends Westminster
United Church and teaches at the United Centre for Theological Studies at the University of
Winnipeg , hopes that the Council will focus on the strength of the denomination.

“We have forgotten that lifeblood of
church is in local congregations,” says Christie, who will not be attending
this Council.

A proposal to eliminate one level of
government in the church is “a hopeful sign,” he says. But he hopes
Commissioners will go further by reducing the national office to “a ceremonial
function” and emphasize the importance of the regions and congregations.

Christie hopes the Council will “start to
break down the inward-looking hidebound denominationalism to which we have drifted
over the past 40 years. What does it mean to be a liberal protestant Christians
in North America in twenty-first century?
What part of God’s mission can the United Church do? Where is God taking us?”

Jeff Cook, pastor of Memorial Transcona
Memorial United Church, is going to the Council—although unlike last time, he
isn’t a candidate for Moderator.

For him, the big issue is the need torestructure the denomination.

“If we don’t do something, it will decide
itself,” he says of the declining donations and falling membership.

For Cook, the big question is what it
means to be the church today, and “what kind of staffing levels, and how many
levels of church governance,” are needed to accomplish that.

He also sees the need to support local
congregations.

“Jesus invited people to the table,” he
says, and local congregations “are our table.”

I also spoke to David Wilson, editor and
publisher of the United ChurchObserver.

Wilson, who has read all of the over 1,000
pages in the Council workbook, says that if the proposals for
restructuring are accepted it could “drastically alter the shape of the Church
. . . it depends on the willingness of Commissioners to recognize that the
United Church of today is very different from the Church in 1925 [when it was
created].”

From his vantage point as editor of the
national publication, he says “there’s not much unanimity” going into the
Council, but there’s one thing there’s no disagreement about: Declining
membership and donations means doing things as usual is “unsustainable.”

“We need a new vision for the future,” he
says, adding that a big question for him is how the Church can “re-capture the
attention and imagination of an increasingly secular society.”

Whether or not the United church can do
that is a big question. But, as Cook notes, the future of the United Church
isn’t just up to the Commissioners.“God is the wild card,” in all of this, he
says. “It may look like the ship is going down, but we are a resurrection
people.”